Once upon a time, this blog was going to be all about my pet bird, when I got one. But I never did get that bird. So, now this blog is about the beautiful, curious things that keep me in a near-constant state of happy distraction. Ironically, many people find these writings when they wonder what "peristerophobia" means. It's a fear of pigeons. I've made a bird blog after all.

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Dropping a bull.

I know I'm not going to have time or energy to write much tonight, so I thought I'd at least show you what's been occupying me all day--introducing one group of my students to the events being depicted in the image below: the lowering of one of the great winged bulls at Nimroud, so that it could be shipped to London and housed in the British Museum, where it remains today. (The bull at right, on the other hand, lives at the Met in Manhattan.) That guy at the top of the cliff, standing all by himself, directing things? That's Austen Henry Layard, for whose Nineveh and Its Remains (1849) this image was the frontispiece. Layard's book has been in print in some version or another ever since its first publication. The things he excavated are now all over the world.

About Me

Annie Dillard could have been writing about me when she said (of herself), "I like the slants of light; I'm a collector." Or Willem de Kooning: "I'm like a slipping glimpser." And don't forget Brenda Ueland: "I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten--happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another." But the Beastie Boys might have said it best: "When it comes to panache, I can't be beat." There's a reason I wear a ring that says Badass.